Term limit supporters argue that career politicians are out of touch with their constituents, but a CU-Boulder business professor counters that term limits encourage politicians to cast votes that are more extreme.
Rather than reflecting the voice of the voters who put them in office, term limits encourage politicians to vote based on their personal ideology.
"If politicians know they are only going to be in office for a certain amount of time, they don聮t have the incentive to stay in favor with the voters at large," said Finance Professor Eric Hughson.
"Without term limits, politicians reflect the voters' interests because they want to get reelected. But if they can聮t be reelected, the politicians vote for what they personally believe rather than what most of their constituents want."
Hughson聮s research also examined whether voters remove politicians from office who don聮t reflect the average constituent聮s sentiments. What keeps politicians like Jesse Helms 聴 whose viewpoints are far more extreme than the average constituent 聴 in office?
Hughson believes that pork barrel politics explains this phenomenon.
"Voters recognize that even if an incumbent politician doesn聮t represent a voter聮s personal views, that politician may still bring a lot of money back to their district," Hughson said. "Further, it usually isn聮t in the interest of a constituency to remove its senior office-holder when other constituencies aren聮t removing theirs.
"This would explain why very few incumbent Congress members lost their reelection efforts but 30 percent of incumbent governors failed their reelection bids. Congress members, but not governors, supply pork."
If term limits are designed to improve the political process, Hughson argues that pork barrel politics needs to be eliminated.
"For tighter term limits to increase the welfare of voters, term limits must also substantially reduce the amount of pork that senior legislators can provide," he said.